Adina Radke summarizes her contribution to the Rethinking iTunes project recently published by 2015 interface design students at FH Potsdam:

MusicFinder is based on Apple’s well-known file manager Finder. It organizes the music collection in column view. In the application’s sidebar the objects of the music library are grouped into categories. Thanks to the cascading principle, navigating through the hierarchies [sic] of objects is simple. The right column of the application is reserved for the music player. There, the currently active piece of music and its cover are displayed in a more generous format.

Execution aside**, I love the simplicity and straightforwardness of this interface. It's almost exactly like the Quick Look functionality that exists within Finder today, but with the substitution of file preview for a free-standing, fully functional UI. It feels like an idea that the iTunes team must have considered years ago. But, who knows? Sometimes obvious mashups like this take years to spontaneously manifest as design solutions.

** Spacing and proportion on this project are all over the place in a way that takes away (fairly significantly) from the presentation of an otherwise beautiful idea. This is exactly the sort of mistake that strains the untrained eye and kills professional presentations.